The violent rancor of that period (1868) having now given place to a more liberal and just acknowledgment of the true relations of all our citizens, I commend to your consideration the modification of the registration and election laws to an extent, that, while securing the inalienable rights of all, will make the usage under them less irksome and exacting to the few.[304]
Together with his message he returned without his approval ten bills to the Senate,[305] and three to the House. The veto power was very freely used by Governor Warmoth. Up to January 1, 1871, he had vetoed thirty-nine bills[306] and suffered others to become law without his approval by lapse of the constitutional time limit, because they were passed by such a majority as to have made “his veto a useless bit of friction.”[307] His courage in boldly vetoing some measures very close to the hearts of his legislators should not pass unnoted, nor the strength of his influence, for only five, up to this time, were able to muster the requisite two-thirds majority in the face of his opposition.
The legislature took to heart the governor’s statement that the questions most urgent were such measures as would most speedily “bring railroads, open natural watercourses, and facilitate ocean commerce,” without heeding his warning of the need for rigid economy. The orgy of voting away paper money to aid paper railroads and canals went on with even greater frenzy than before. It was unfortunate that the governor did not carry the courage of his convictions further and instead of vetoing but six bills, do his part to quash the thirteen laws[308] which appropriated over $800,000 in actual subsidies; which granted away valuable timber along with the right of way to a new railroad; and which granted exemption from taxation to another canal company. The loose extension of $40,000, which had been appropriated the preceding session for the removal of obstructions in Bayou Bartholomew, to “what more might be necessary”[309] is indicative of the business care applied to the State pocket-book. The governor’s signature to the bill for the purchase of a site and erection of a State capitol[310] may be regarded as raising the State indebtedness by one and one-half million dollars. He suffered an act guaranteeing the second mortgage bonds of another railroad to become law without his signature,[311] but the measure which guaranteed the principal and interest of a warehouse company to the amount of over a million dollars was obliged to pass over his veto.[312] The total amount added to the State debt by this Assembly amounted to about four million dollars. Nineteen different appropriation bills were passed, aside from those granting subsidies.
But it was apparent by this time that much of this effort to stimulate development by State aid was barren of result. Some roads which had received State aid had nothing to show for it, and committees of investigation “to ascertain whether the said company has complied with the conditions of the act” incorporating it were beginning to appear.[313] So strong was the feeling that the governor recommended to the next legislature that unless work be begun actively within six months, certain railroads should lose their charters.[314]
The vexatious levee problem seemed to have found a solution. When the serious crevasses which threatened New Orleans with inundation appeared in the spring, the governor assumed control and closed the breaks with the aid of State engineers. The Louisiana Levee Company was then formed and its interests made identical with those of the State. The company contracted to construct, maintain, and control levees on both banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries according to the requirements of a competent commission of three able engineers; to construct at least three million cubic yards each year until the levee was completed to the required standard. To get the company started the State subscribed a considerable sum and levied a special tax of two-tenths per cent for twenty-one years for a repair fund, and, in the absence of any tax for the current year, issued bonds to the amount of one million dollars.[315]
Although a number of additional schools had been put in operation,[316] the superimposed Northern school law still proved unsatisfactory for Louisiana and came up for further amendment. Forty thousand dollars was fleeced from the people annually for salaries of school administrators and incidental expenses, outside of the teachers’ salaries and other expenses. School directors were often unable to write their names. A letter from the president of the school board of Carroll Parish, as printed in the National Republican, is so ungrammatical and misspelled that it is almost impossible to read it.[317] Cain Sartain, who later figured as a Representative, now a school teacher, was appallingly ignorant.[318] Naturally demands for the abolition of this costly and inefficient establishment were incessant. The supplement passed this session tended to simplify the law, but the chief change was provision for the appointment by a State board of subordinate boards of school directors for the several parishes, towns, and cities, who should have charge of all the funds and school records, all to be under the direction of the division superintendent. An additional tax of one to two mills was to be levied on the taxable property of the parish. Special individual provision was made for the board in New Orleans and for the levying of a special tax to the amount requested by the board. But a section of the revenue law which prohibited the city from collecting taxes in excess of two per cent[319] would have closed the schools, as the limit had already been exceeded, except for the aid rendered by the State superintendent and the city government.[320] Still the system awakened great dissatisfaction, even the colored people grumbling. The governor, by the appointment of Conway, a Republican and intimate friend, to the headship of the school-system, erected it into a political machine.[321]
Agreeably to the governor’s recommendation, bills to modify both the election and registration[322] laws were introduced into the Senate about the middle of the session, but were not pressed through, largely, it was charged, because of the governor’s secret opposition. An effort to tamper still further with the government of New Orleans,[323] and a generous appropriation for the militia[324] passed both houses but failed, apparently, to secure the governor’s signature. Some attention was devoted to the labor problem and to the question of creating parishes. The latter subject, probably for political reasons, had been something of a mania with the legislature, until at this session[325] the proposition was urged with much force “to stop the legislature from creating new parishes unless authorized by the voters of the parishes to be divided.”[326]
The extravagance and state of utter corruption of the legislative body in 1871-2 were only the natural result of the conditions started in 1868-9.
The amount of the State debt was disputed. The governor held that it was, in round numbers, $22,000,000, while the auditor claimed it to be $41,000,000, the difference to be accounted for by a contingent debt of $18,000,000 dependent on the construction of railroads, the second mortgage bonds of which the State had agreed to indorse.[327] The bonded debt was $19,188,300, the annual interest on which amounted to $1,403,820, besides which there was a miscellaneous debt of $3,187,490.[328] A comparison of the debt with the period just preceding the Warmoth administration is suggestive, as it had increased over $8,000,000 since 1868, taking the conservative estimate,[329] growing by deficiencies at the rate of over $1,000,000 a year. The expenditures in 1870 had exceeded the income by over $1,000,000 although the deficit was more than covered by the balance in the State treasury at the beginning of the year. The total amount of bonds or aid granted by the State to various corporations, prior to 1871 and for which bonds had not yet been issued, was over twelve millions. The auditor estimated the probable expenditures of 1872 at something over three millions, but as a matter of fact they far exceeded that sum.
The total amount of taxable property in the State at the close of 1871 was $250,594,417.50 from which $4,605,475.02 in taxes was collected.[330] With this should be compared the valuation and taxes in 1870 to show the decrease. The valuation was the same—$251,296,017.02,—but the taxes collected were $6,490,028.[331] The unpaid taxes amounted in 1871 to nearly five millions, exclusive of the taxes due for 1870 and of the taxes in a number of parishes where no rolls of assessment had been made.[332] The aggregate tax in the State was fourteen and one-half mills on the dollar.[333] So great was the burden of this taxation that in some parishes whole forty-acre tracts of land, as rich as any in the Nile, were sold that year by the tax-gatherer for one dollar, and in many instances estates absolutely found no bidders. Large owners were willing to give half their acres to immigrant families on the sole condition that they should settle on and improve the land given them. A company was being formed in northern Louisiana to divide 50,000 acres of land in tracts of fifty acres to a family. Real estate declined within the years 1870-1 not less than twenty-five per cent.[334] What was formerly considered very good security, mortgage paper for instance, had become of little value, because in a few years at that rate of taxation no one could pass the papers, for in case of foreclosure the property bore with it the burden of five, six, or seven per cent taxes which would leave no revenue.[335] The picture of the financial state drawn by a distinguished Democrat about this time is worthy of quotation.